Junta VP returns to Guinea after leader was shot and left country for emergency treatment

Junta VP returns to Guinea after leader was shot

CONAKRY, Guinea — The No. 2 of Guinea’s military junta returned to the country overnight, helping fill a dangerous power vacuum after the president was shot by his top aide and evacuated for emergency treatment, a government spokesman said Saturday.

Sekouba Konate, one of the vice presidents of Guinea’s military junta and its minister of defense, had been away in Lebanon and had rushed to get back after Capt. Moussa “Dadis” Camara was wounded in an apparent assassination attempt by his aide-de-camp. Camara was airlifted to a military hospital in Morocco early Friday where he is receiving treatment.

“Sekouba Konate returned at around midnight. It’s he that is going to coordinate the actions (of the junta),” said Minister of Communications Idrissa Cherif.

A nationwide manhunt continued, he said, for the former head of the presidential guard and one of the president’s most trusted aides Lt. Abubakar “Toumba” Diakite who opened fire on the country’s leader following an altercation on Thursday.

Cherif also confirmed that two people were killed in the confrontation, including Camara’s driver and his bodyguard. “The bodyguard’s head was crushed. They attacked him with machetes. His eyes were poked out,” Cherif said.

Cherif said Camara was doing fine. But Blaise Compaore, the president of neighboring Burkina Faso, told state TV late Friday that the Guinean leaders condition was “difficult but not desperate.”

Camara’s departure has left a dangerous void in the country of 10 million where the military has become deeply fractured. It is the first time that the 45-year-old leader has left Guinea since seizing control in a coup last December.